☼ s e r a p h i n a ☼
IF ANY RING REMAINS, OF RUBBLE & CONSEQUENCE
my salt heart agape, an oh to construct the shape of the whole just before -
When her hooves first leave the sun-scarred ground, she is not really aware that she is floating. Her magic is a strange thing, and it thinks in languages that she does not understand; its voice hums inside of her, bigger than any river, like the sea or the sky, and it echoes the tumultuous throbbing inside of her chest in screams that are louder than the sound that created them. When her hair swirls around her, serpentine as a gorgon, she barely feels it brush against her cheek – from the numbness that comes from her metal scars or her own distraction she cannot determine. It’s Bexley’s expression that tells Seraphina that she is floating, really, that she is suspended in the air like some strange, half-divine thing. (And maybe she is. Magic is a god’s gift, and she suspects that it is hardly a coincidence that hers awakened when it did – either way, she feels less like herself with each passing day, less like a girl, or less like her own body. Her touch reaches far beyond the extent of her skin; her mind does, too.)
This is her Bexley Briar, with her teeth like a snake; even when she cries, Seraphina notes, her tears might as well be flame, as scorching hot as the desert sun. Tears that can burn skin. She looks at her, all beautiful and all terrible, and she looks at that scar that splits her face like a great, pink-red canyon, and she thinks of when she found her, right after she’d gotten the thing – dripping pus and blood, the way that it had leaked for weeks. Months, when she was emotional and the tissue was pulled around with the movement of her pretty glasgow face, and Bexley was often emotional.
“Yes,” she says, and her voice is a roiling, terrifying thing. If Seraphina were more easily frightened, she might have shuddered at the sound of it; but she isn’t. Something inside of her is howling in response, like a hungry animal, foaming around the lips. That strange, feral thing crawls up inside of her and shows on her face. Seraphina does not smile often, but she smiles then, and the expression is wicked. It is a smile that says I knew you would. The curl of her mouth is all wrong. Her teeth are bared, and, if you looked at them in passing, you might imagine them coated in a fine sheen of blood – they’re both wicked, aren’t they, a pair of mad things -
But it comforts her. She would not want to do this alone, if only because it would be unfair. She is not the only one who has suffered, and she is not the only one who will suffer. The way that she sees it, justice would give each their pound of flesh, and Seraphina has always cared deeply for justice.
(And, if her justice has most often been the color red, so be it. So be it if justice was won with fire and broken bones. So be it. So long as it was justice.)
Then - “Why did he come for you?”
A simple, cutting question. Something like a growl curls itself across her lips, pulling them up to half-bare her teeth, but not at Solterra’s golden girl. Her gaze is a distant, animal thing, and it is somewhere between her half-dead body on the Steppe and between a persistent image that lingers like a bloody, bloody promise in the back of mind: Raum, split open across the Solterran throne, dripping red down the marble stairs. But she collects herself. Now is not the time for that, no matter how much she wishes that it was, and she has a question to answer.
“It wasn’t about me,” she admits; there is a venomous, curling edge to her tone, sharp as a well-polished knife. “It was about Solterra – about you, and about Rhoswen.” She is quiet, for a fraction of a second, as a sharp jab of worry impales itself through her chest. Rhoswen and the girl – Sabine. Were they safe? Had he gotten to them? Raum has already killed Acton, and he loved him, didn’t he? His brother. What was to say that he wouldn’t kill his lover and his daughter, too? (And – she thinks of Rhoswen as she last saw her, on Veneror, the burning curve of her spine against the dawn, and she does not want to think of the last thing she said to her.) “Raum destroys what he loves, but he can’t take accountability for its destruction. He is always looking for someone else to blame for his ruin, for his own – flaws. He wants to hurt the world because he is hurt.”
And she’d let him in, she thinks. She was letting him do it.
But she wouldn’t let him get away with it.
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tags | @Bexley
notes | thirty years later....
IF ANY RING REMAINS, OF RUBBLE & CONSEQUENCE
my salt heart agape, an oh to construct the shape of the whole just before -
When her hooves first leave the sun-scarred ground, she is not really aware that she is floating. Her magic is a strange thing, and it thinks in languages that she does not understand; its voice hums inside of her, bigger than any river, like the sea or the sky, and it echoes the tumultuous throbbing inside of her chest in screams that are louder than the sound that created them. When her hair swirls around her, serpentine as a gorgon, she barely feels it brush against her cheek – from the numbness that comes from her metal scars or her own distraction she cannot determine. It’s Bexley’s expression that tells Seraphina that she is floating, really, that she is suspended in the air like some strange, half-divine thing. (And maybe she is. Magic is a god’s gift, and she suspects that it is hardly a coincidence that hers awakened when it did – either way, she feels less like herself with each passing day, less like a girl, or less like her own body. Her touch reaches far beyond the extent of her skin; her mind does, too.)
This is her Bexley Briar, with her teeth like a snake; even when she cries, Seraphina notes, her tears might as well be flame, as scorching hot as the desert sun. Tears that can burn skin. She looks at her, all beautiful and all terrible, and she looks at that scar that splits her face like a great, pink-red canyon, and she thinks of when she found her, right after she’d gotten the thing – dripping pus and blood, the way that it had leaked for weeks. Months, when she was emotional and the tissue was pulled around with the movement of her pretty glasgow face, and Bexley was often emotional.
“Yes,” she says, and her voice is a roiling, terrifying thing. If Seraphina were more easily frightened, she might have shuddered at the sound of it; but she isn’t. Something inside of her is howling in response, like a hungry animal, foaming around the lips. That strange, feral thing crawls up inside of her and shows on her face. Seraphina does not smile often, but she smiles then, and the expression is wicked. It is a smile that says I knew you would. The curl of her mouth is all wrong. Her teeth are bared, and, if you looked at them in passing, you might imagine them coated in a fine sheen of blood – they’re both wicked, aren’t they, a pair of mad things -
But it comforts her. She would not want to do this alone, if only because it would be unfair. She is not the only one who has suffered, and she is not the only one who will suffer. The way that she sees it, justice would give each their pound of flesh, and Seraphina has always cared deeply for justice.
(And, if her justice has most often been the color red, so be it. So be it if justice was won with fire and broken bones. So be it. So long as it was justice.)
Then - “Why did he come for you?”
A simple, cutting question. Something like a growl curls itself across her lips, pulling them up to half-bare her teeth, but not at Solterra’s golden girl. Her gaze is a distant, animal thing, and it is somewhere between her half-dead body on the Steppe and between a persistent image that lingers like a bloody, bloody promise in the back of mind: Raum, split open across the Solterran throne, dripping red down the marble stairs. But she collects herself. Now is not the time for that, no matter how much she wishes that it was, and she has a question to answer.
“It wasn’t about me,” she admits; there is a venomous, curling edge to her tone, sharp as a well-polished knife. “It was about Solterra – about you, and about Rhoswen.” She is quiet, for a fraction of a second, as a sharp jab of worry impales itself through her chest. Rhoswen and the girl – Sabine. Were they safe? Had he gotten to them? Raum has already killed Acton, and he loved him, didn’t he? His brother. What was to say that he wouldn’t kill his lover and his daughter, too? (And – she thinks of Rhoswen as she last saw her, on Veneror, the burning curve of her spine against the dawn, and she does not want to think of the last thing she said to her.) “Raum destroys what he loves, but he can’t take accountability for its destruction. He is always looking for someone else to blame for his ruin, for his own – flaws. He wants to hurt the world because he is hurt.”
And she’d let him in, she thinks. She was letting him do it.
But she wouldn’t let him get away with it.
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tags | @
notes | thirty years later....
I'M IN A ROOM MADE OUT OF MIRRORSand there's no way to escape the violence of a girl against herself.☼please tag Sera! contact is encouraged, short of violence
